How to Check Website Service Status on a VPS
VPS Servers · Self-help guide
When a website is offline, first check whether the web service is running. Connect to the VPS using SSH. For Nginx, run sudo systemctl status nginx. For Apache on Ubuntu, run sudo systemctl status apache2. For Apache on AlmaLinux, run sudo systemctl status httpd. Look for active running. If the service is stopped, restart it with sudo systemctl restart nginx, sudo systemctl restart apache2, or sudo systemctl restart httpd. If it fails to start, check logs using sudo journalctl -u servicename -n 50. Do not keep restarting a failing service without reading the error, because the log usually points to the cause.